Gen. Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff, sees the future in battlefield situational awareness as being in the palm of his hand. Literally. The Air Force is working to develop a handheld version of its Remotely Operated Video Enhanced Receiver (ROVER), Moseley said in a May 3 interview. Essentially what Moseley envisions is the ability of troops on the ground to dial up overhead full-motion video on a Blackberry-like device the way the rest of the world uses cell phones now.
SOUTHERN SUPPORT: ITT said May 4 that the U.S. Air Force awarded it a potentially $194 million contract to support the aerial counter-drug surveillance mission of the U.S. Southern Command. Aircraft operate out of the Netherlands Antilles and Ecuador. ITT will provide air traffic control, airfield operations, communications technical services, food service, billeting, civil engineering, emergency fire response and other support as necessary. Phase-in began April 1, and with options, the contract will extend to 2014.
DEFENSE CLIMATE CHANGE: Just as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its report May 4, the Bush administration issued its own tally of its climate change expenditures, asserting that the president has devoted $37 billion to climate change issues since 2001. Deeper down in the tally, however, is data that shows the Defense Department - the largest single energy user in the U.S. government - has decreased its spending related to the interagency Climate Change Technology Program by $39 billion worth of budget authority over FY '07-'08.
Soaring valuations haven't slowed down mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity in the aerospace and defense market. A new study by PricewaterhouseCoopers says the disclosed value of aerospace M&A deals reached $33 billion in 2006, up from $24 billion in each of the two previous years and the highest level since 2000. The average deal size climbed to $277 million, up from $99 million in 2003, according to the study, which was released May 2.
ITAR IMBROGLIO: International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) have long been recognized as an impediment to the export of commercial space hardware. U.S. manufacturers complain bitterly that they lose business to overseas competitors because of State Department delays in licensing exports for satellites and other hardware under ITAR. But the problem extends into scientific cooperation as well.
In response to reports that the Air Force had made questionable changes in the acquisition of its replacement fleet for the service's combat, search and rescue (CSAR-X) helicopters, Chief of Staff Michael Moseley said the Air Force would never make such moves to narrow the field in favor of a particular competitor. "You never change anything to vector to a competitor," Moseley said during a May 3 interview. "If you change anything, it should be to open the competition."
READYING RAPTOR: Congress is scheduled to receive a report May 27, Pentagon officials say, that will address the pros, cons and possibilities of exporting more U.S. military technologies and platforms abroad. One of the key platforms being eyed for foreign sales, especially by the Japanese, is the F-22 Raptor. A highly placed source intimately familiar with the Raptor program says there's no doubt prime contractor Lockheed Martin wants to - and could - build and sell an export version that would keep top secret information intact.
Air Force brass is looking for ways to develop more common avionics and related equipment or operations between the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). "I'd like to see that," said Gen. Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff. "That makes perfect sense." What Moseley would like to avoid, he said in a May 3 interview, is the kind of different avionic displays facing pilots from one Air Force combat aircraft to another, such as an F-16 or an F-15. "I would like to see something more common," Moseley said.
TANKER FIRST: Gen. Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff, reiterated again May 3 that the service is looking for a tanker first and foremost in its contractor selection for the replacement fleet of the KC-135. He called the cargo-carrying attributes of bidders Northrop Grumman and Boeing "attractive," but said he wants a tanker that can generate sorties, has fuel-efficient engines, is reliable, provides operational flexibility and can take off or land on as many runways as possible, as well as operate in whatever area the Air Force needs to.
PARIS - A change in France's defense and aerospace policy looms once the dust settles from the May 6 presidential and parliamentary elections. The impact is likely to be greater on industrial strategy than military spending.
Israel's self-examination of last summer's military debacle in Lebanon may have missed a critical factor. Senior Israeli Air Force officers are saying privately that there's a deeper story of professional jealousy and bureaucratic intrigue. The preliminary report of the Winograd commission faults Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and IDF chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dani Halutz, for the muddled operations against Hezbollah.
The F-22 Raptor will start tests this month with software to use wide area interflight data links (IFDLs) that will enable a four-aircraft team of F-22s to trade data with another team of four Raptors, said Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Riemer, the new Raptor program executive officer. The IFDL test is part of an Air Force effort to develop better data links between Raptors and with other aircraft to share the enormous amount of situational awareness data the F-22 can collect, Riemer told the Daily May 2 in his first media interview in his new role.
Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee will push to reinstate authorized funds for the Airborne Laser (ABL) and missile defense spending, including proposed ground-based midcourse interceptors (GBMIs) in Eastern Europe, according to two strategic forces subcommittee members. The lawmakers, whose party used to control of Congress, so far have signed on with Democrats' fiscal 2008 defense authorization subcommittee language, but said they are crafting amendments to offer in the full committee's markup May 9 on the House floor later this month.
FUL FUNDING: The HASC unconventional and terrorism subcommittee has fully funded the related fiscal 2008 budget requests and even boosted a few with additional funds. For instance, the Special Operations Command's Predator unmanned aerial vehicle request was fully funded, and the panel added $10 million more for SOCOM UAV ISR efforts.
TROJAN WORK: CACI International said May 2 that it has been awarded a task order by the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Research Development and Engineering Center's Intelligence and Information Directorate to support system development and fielding of the Army's TROJAN satellite communications systems. The three-year effort has a potential value of $149.7 million, the company said. CACI will engineer, integrate, test and deploy TROJAN systems worldwide with the Army, following its TROJAN work through other contracts.
The Air Force and F-22 Raptor contractors team is only a couple of weeks away from completing negotiations for a multiyear procurement contract that could serve as a foundation for additional aircraft buys beyond the deal and become a template for other similar deals. The multiyear deal will provide the promised $225 million in savings over the proposed three years, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Riemer, the new Raptor program executive officer, told the Daily May 2 in his first media interview in his new job.
Top space scientists say their community is willing to do its part to help contain costs on spacecraft hardware and operations, a significant shift from last year's us-versus-them debates that pitted scientific probes against human exploration as NASA absorbed a $4 billion cut in its five-year science accounts.
A Naval Sea Systems command report recommends the service take a look at nuclear or mixed power plants for other ships to allay growing fuel demands. "The Navy should consider ship options with nuclear power and combined plant architectures (e.g., diesels combined with gas turbine boost) in studies for future surface combatants and amphibious warfare ships," said the report, "U.S. Navy Report: Alternative Propulsion Methods for Surface Combatants and Amphibious Warfare Ships," released May 3.
Walter M. (Wally) Schirra, one of NASA's original astronauts and the only one to have flown in space on board Mercury, Gemini and Apollo vehicles, died May 2 at the age of 84. His family asked that the cause of death be reported as "natural causes." Schirra was already a Korean War air combat veteran with two confirmed MiG kills from U.S. Air Force F-86s when he was accepted as one of the Mercury 7 astronauts in April 1959.
A freight train carrying redesigned solid rocket motor (RSRM) segments for two upcoming space shuttle flights derailed May 2 when a bridge collapsed beneath it.
Singapore's defense ministry is replacing its air force's E-2Cs with four Gulfstream 550 Airborne Early Warning aircraft (G550-AEW). The decision, first announced on the ministry's Web site, was confirmed by Gulfstream on May 2. Teo Chee Hean, Singapore's defense minister, is quoted as saying the Gulfstreams "will significantly enhance" his country's airborne early warning and surveillance, a capability he described as "critical."
